by Emma Pullar
I frantically scratch at the wall, plaster driving under my nails. It comes away so easily. With both hands, I claw until the carpet has dandruff and the hole is big enough for me to reach my hand inside. My fingers close around a small object. I pull it from the wall. I hold out my shaking hand and slowly spread my fingers like the bud of a flower opening to the sun. In my palm is a dust-covered, velvet drawstring bag. I smile, overcome with emotion. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
‘The serum,’ I whisper to myself.
‘I’ll take that.’
Thick fingers snatch the bag from my hand. No! In a flash I’m on my feet, ready to take down this Central bastard. I’ll fight … I’ll …
‘Clover?’
The mountain of a man, my rock in bad times, smiles warmly as he sits down behind the desk. My mouth hangs open in shock. He’s wearing a suit, his bulging arms almost splitting the seams. Silver sparkles at his wrists; cufflinks brandishing the Gale City emblem.
‘Hello, Sky.’
‘Clover?’ I say again, frowning, staring. What’s going on?
‘Please, take a seat.’
I lean away from the chair, in my mind’s eye someone’s skin is being stripped off. The room warps. I hold my thumping forehead with one hand, my sickening stomach with the other.
‘I’ll stand,’ I say, puffing out the stress. I compose myself.
Clover crosses his fingers over the velvet bag on the desk. He’s still grinning. That pearly white grin I used to know; once reassuring, now like a wolf bearing down on its prey. A wolf in sheep’s clothing, as my grandfather used to say but Clover isn’t a sheep, he’s a large predator in a smaller predator’s clothing. My confusion is soon replaced by anger. It creeps in and closes my fingers into fists. I clear my mind, I focus my hatred.
‘Surprised to see me?’ Clover asks, his deep voice almost jovial.
‘No,’ I lie, and roll my eyes to the ceiling.
‘Come, come, Skyla, let’s not play games.’
‘Look who’s talking? You’re a fucking Central!’ I snap, and fold my arms.
Clover unlocks his thick fingers and pulls the small bag apart, he reaches inside and gently removes a vial of dark green liquid. It looks like pond scum. I fix my eyes on the vial, words are tumbling from Clover’s plump lips, I catch every second word until he says something that attracts my full attention.
‘The painting was created in 2056 by a well-respected and prominent artist who was born to an Earth city in Russia. Do you like it?’
I shrug. I’m confused. Earth City in Russia? Who talks like that? The Russian cities, the ones not already under water, were destroyed in the land wars, like all the others.
Clover rests the vial on the velvet bag and gets up from the desk. Confident. Certain I won’t try and snatch it. My fingers twitch but don’t move. I watch as strong arms lift the painting up and place it over the hole in the wall, back in its position as if it had never been removed.
‘Gramps was a keen artist, wasn’t he? He would have appreciated this, don’t you think?’ Clover smiles. I don’t return it.
‘My grandfather …’ I pause, jaw clenched. Gramps, why would Clover call him that? Only people that knew him best called him that. I try not to show that his mention of my grandfather in such a casual way has rattled me. ‘… was going to teach me to paint. That day never came.’
Clover doesn’t reply, doesn’t say sorry, he doesn’t say that executing my grandfather was not in his control. He doesn’t say these things because I know it was in his control. He’s responsible for my grandfather’s death. He let that happen. Rage surfaces as I stare at Clover, whose dark eyes search my face, empathetic in their gaze. A Central with empathy for a Skel? Not likely. He doesn’t care what happens to me or anyone. Clover points to the top picture and continues his happy lecturing.
‘Paintings tell stories and this painting tells a particularly special story. It depicts an important historical event for the human race, one that would change our existence forever.’
I stare at the painting. What does he mean? This is a work of fantasy painted by an artist with an overactive imagination.
‘In what way?’ I ask.
‘It shows how the human race managed to save itself from the brink of extinction.’
Clover’s speech is euphoric. This painting excites him the way a Runner arriving with glory excites an addict. I’m conscious that the longer I keep him talking the longer I will stay alive. I try to think of a good question.
‘The human race survived because there was no one left to fight. The cities are under water or in ruins. Gale City is the last city on Earth, and we’re not exactly thriving, the population is small.’ I say, feigning interest.
‘It won’t stay small for long, and allow me to correct you,’ he licks his full lips, ‘Gale City is the first city, not the last.’
I have no idea what he’s blabbering on about, and I’m starting to wish he would either kill me or send me back to Rock Vault.
‘Whatever you say.’ I cross my arms.
‘What’s this?’
Clover points to the top-most picture; the one of the sun’s rays reflected onto the red planet by giant mirrors.
‘A planet,’ I say, flatly.
‘Mars. The first planet humans set foot on outside of Earth.’
‘People went to Mars?’ I’m suddenly interested.
‘STRATA-K was the first ship to successfully land on Mars. Missions A-J failed, half of them were unmanned. K was our last hope and the first successful human mission, and once settled on the red planet, a specialist team studied DNA samples from inside the Martian mountains, set up infrastructures, mostly caves for mining and greenhouse gas emission plants and ...’
‘If that’s true, why aren’t there people on Mars now?’ I interrupt.
I look over the three-section painting again and Clover’s words plant a seed in my mind.
‘There are,’ he says. ‘STRATA-K was a one-way mission. No going back. The team were terraformers. The planet’s atmosphere thickened over time, and with the help of the mirror system and greenhouse gasses, the air became breathable. When the land wars erupted people were evacuated from Earth, well, what was left of it after accelerated global warming took hold.’
‘Mars was colonised?’
The seed sprouts.
‘Mars is colonised,’ Clover corrects.
I study the second picture; domes and smoke billowing into the sky and people in spacesuits. My eyes drop to the third picture. The one of Gale City surrounded by red desert. My gaze flits to the window. Through the open horizontal blind, the red sand stretches to the darker mountains cut into the clear blue sky. Clover’s lips spread into a smile.
‘They’re not strictly human,’ he says, thoughtfully.
‘Who?’
‘The Morbihan … Tell me, Skyla, what do you think Morbihan stands for?’
‘I don’t care.’ I say dismissively, shock prickles over my skin, he can’t be saying what he’s saying.
I do want to know, but I don’t want him to think I’m interested in anything he has to say. Why is he telling me stories? Why isn’t he dragging me off to prison? Is my life a game to him? I’ve forgotten how intuitive he can be; he can feel my curiosity and feeds it without permission.
‘Martian Organism of Raised Biological Intelligence with Humanoid Attributes and Nature.’
I don’t speak for a moment. I didn’t hear anything past MARTIAN! Like little green men?
‘Martian?’
The word escapes before I can stop it.
‘The Morbihan are part indigenous, unlike us,’ he says with an air of satisfaction. ‘They have more right to Mars than we do.’
‘What are you talking about?’ I snap, ‘this isn’t Mars, it’s Earth!’
Clover walks back round to the desk and sits down.
‘Are you sure?’ he asks, brown eyes wide, wild with delight at my ignorance. I glance back out of the win
dow. I say nothing. I’m not sure of anything anymore.
‘Humans have not inhabited Earth for thousands of years, Skyla,’ he says, still staring at me, his eyes narrow and unnerving.
He’s not an Eremite, I tell myself. He’s a Central! I can’t believe anything he says. He’s trying to scare me.
‘But the elders …’
‘What they teach, and what is truth, are two different things. History tells us that some people couldn’t let go of their old life. They struggled with the fact that Earth was a wasteland and that they could never go back home, so they made up their own reality, a new Earth and that carried through generations.’
‘That doesn’t make sense!’
‘Sometimes, a lie is told so often that it becomes truth,’ Clover raises his dark eyebrows. ‘The elders believe this is Earth and generations of inaccurate accounts of history have preserved this falsehood.’
‘I don’t believe it. This is rat-shit! Mars is a small, red planet way out in space. I’ve read about it. It’s a desert planet with no life, a bunch of abandoned rovers on it and …’
My blood freezes, veins turning to icicles under my skin, the light hairs on my arms shiver. There aren’t any other cities; there’s no communication from beyond the wall. If there were land wars here, the Skels who do come back from their desert missions would have seen ruins, or told stories of abandoned cities or oceans far and wide. Nothing but sand for miles is all they say. I sigh. Maybe I’ve always known, maybe Clover’s right and like them I allowed myself to believe the comforting lie. Then there’d always be a chance I could leave the city, in the hope of finding other civilizations out there, people who survived.
‘Okay, say I believe you. Why clone people? There are enough Skels in this city. We don’t need Morbs, and why not clone animals, huh? The city is overrun with rats and crows and parasites but you can’t clone some sheep or cows?’ Clover frowns. ‘Yeah, I know about what you do to prisoners, as if mutilation wasn’t bad enough!’
Clover shakes his head and holds up his hand to stop me from asking any more questions. He acts as if I’ve said nothing out of the ordinary.
‘Cloning is not as simple as all that. That’s the reason Showcase was created. When you clone a person or an animal they don’t turn out quite the same. The Day of the Bird is a prime example. Sloppy cloning and quick breeding.
There’s a thud against the window. I gasp and turn my head to see a crow slide down the glass. Maybe they know we’re talking ill of them and they’re trying to get in and peck our tongues off. I shudder. I can’t stand those feathered freaks.
‘As you can see …’ Clover points to the window, a black feather stuck to it, ‘they’re not as they should be. We don’t know why they’re not right. Cloned animals survived the process but then died within days but some survived long enough to breed and their genetic defects carried over. Tests were done and it was concluded that cloned animals aren’t safe to consume.’
‘Yet people are?’ I spit.
‘Skels are not clones.’ He says patiently.
‘So why clone at all, if it’s that problematic?’ I say, crossing my arms, thanks to these Central idiots we have a city swarming with deranged birds.
‘Scientists have always been obsessed with the past, they even tried to bring back dinosaurs, reinstating the white skinned was another challenge for them.’
‘Did white humans become extinct like dinosaurs?’ I ask, I have heard of these beasts, they once roamed the Earth but were wiped out by an ice age.
‘The loss of the lighter skin pigmentation due to centuries of interracial relations, coupled with the rising sea levels and floods which triggered the land wars in which many perished, caused the white skin to become rare,’ Clover explains. ‘There were a few whites transported to Mars, but not enough to rebuild this type of human. Scientists had pre-empted this problem, and insisted a stock of human and animal DNA was transported to the new home planet.’
My expression stays blank. Who cares about what colour people are? I don’t. My mind wanders, searching for a solution to this dangerous situation, for a way out of the room. I pretend to pay attention while thinking of an escape plan.
‘Central started the cloning programme to avert the extinction of the white races. They tried many cloning methods, but the subjects kept dying like the animals did. They soon realised that they needed something to bind them to the environment.’
A fire lights in my mind. The flames flicker until I can see a picture in them.
‘Those giant cylinders! You did that! You created those deformed people, didn’t you?’
I feel like a bucket of cold water has been poured down my back. This is all too much. Clover strokes the vial.
‘Not me personally, Sky,’ he says calmly. ‘I wasn’t around back then. I’ve read the logs. After many failed attempts, a strand of Martian scrab DNA delivered the best results; an entirely new race of people. The scientists must have thought they were so damn clever, until the side-effects occurred.’
Clover is thrilled recounting his ancestor’s discoveries. I’m disgusted anyone would interfere with nature in this way, and what the hell is a scrab? More scientific terminology that I don’t understand.
‘You know … I walked straight into that room. The one with all your precious research, pickled people, and scientific instruments. I could have destroyed everything in there!’ I say, spitefully.
‘But you didn’t.’
Clover reaches behind him. My eyes flick to the vial. He grabs a glass bottle filled with bronze liquid.
‘Drink?’
I shake my head. He unscrews the top and pours himself a measure. He swirls the liquid inside the tumbler in his great fingers. I walk around the desk to face him.
‘I didn’t destroy it, because I thought it couldn’t be that important. The door wasn’t locked or guarded.’
‘Not everything of importance is locked away or guarded. If that was the case, we would all guard our lives by locking ourselves away.’
‘Central do,’ I say, indignantly.
‘Not all of us,’ Clover grins.
I look at Clover though different eyes. I would have trusted him with my life. Yet all the time he had the power to change my fate and didn’t do a thing. He knew the lies told to us about this planet yet he keeps the population blind to it. I want to shoot him in his smug face! He hasn’t had me dragged back to Rock Vault yet, so I figure I’ll press him for more information. Maybe if I can keep him drinking, he’ll get falling-down-drunk and I can grab the cure and run.
‘Why was making a white race so important?’ I ask.
Clover leans back, tips the tumbler and lets the liquid slide down his throat. He holds his hand out, offering me the chance to sit. Again, I shake my head and stand tall. He clears his throat.
‘No single colour stands out as superior when you are marvelling at the beauty of a rainbow,’ he says, pouring himself another glass. ‘But to lose or to have never seen any one of those colours would be a shame, don’t you think?’
‘People are best with their colours mixed,’ I say, folding my arms.
‘You’re entitled to your opinion,’ he says, knocking back his second drink. ‘That’s all anyone is entitled to.’ He pours a third. ‘In my opinion, it’s important to keep diversity alive and preserve all the colours of the rainbow. Had we not created the Morbihan, we would all be the same colour.’
‘I don’t see the problem,’ I say.
‘No, you wouldn’t. You believe we should all look and behave the same. Yet you couldn’t be more different from other Skels.’
Clover puts down his glass and picks the vial back up. He tips it upside-down. The black-green liquid ripples down the sides.
‘Why don’t you behave differently?’ I say, heat rising up my face. ‘Cure the Morbs, change things for the better.’
‘Because I don’t believe that would make things better.’
I clench my fists. There’s no poi
nt in arguing with someone who doesn’t care to see your point of view. He’s never experienced the life of a Skel. He’ll never understand, and even if he does, there’s no way Central will swap their luxury, power, and privilege in order to empower and improve the lives of gutter rats. They don’t have to, so they don’t.
‘A stroke of genius,’ Clover says, holding up the vial. ‘No doubt about that, but it was created by a foolish genius. The contents of this vial will only lead to misery. Surely you know this?’
My muscles tense. I don’t agree. I watch the vial in his hands. Be patient. Don’t let the rage out. Don’t do anything rash. My emotions take charge of my head.
‘Clearly I don’t know shit!’ I yell, slamming my fists down on the desk. ‘If I did, I would have realised what damn planet I lived on. I would have known that you were too clean to be a Slum Lord, too well spoken, too compassionate!’
The small office is starting to make me feel trapped. I need to get outside. Earth, Mars, whatever. I need to get out of here.
‘Compassionate?’ Clover sounds surprised. He grins. ‘You think I care about people?’
‘Not anymore! I think you’re a cun–’
‘Tut, tut … careful, Sky.’ Clover raises his voice. ‘I’ve kept you alive this long, you wouldn’t want to ruin it now.’
Kept alive? Without the cure, he can kill me now. What am I going to do? Go back to the Vables with Bunce? They’d never have me back, and Bunce – they’d probably disown him.
‘You’ve been useful,’ Clover smiles slyly. ‘I need more people like you around. You led me straight to the serum. As I knew you would.’
‘What?’
‘Did you think you could breeze in and out of here like the wind,’ Clover laughs.
I said that to Bunce, before we came. Bunce – where is he? Clover clearly admires the sound of his own voice.